Review Reports - From Urban Challenges to “ClimaEquitable” Opportunities: Enhancing Resilience with Urban Welfare

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic of the submitted manuscript: "From Urban Challenges to "ClimaEquitable" Opportunities: Enhancing Resilience with urban welfare" is relevant, which is substantiated in the introduction, which provides a detailed analysis of the state of the art of the issue under study, showing the importance of the requirement to take into account socio-economic and environmental indicators of urban environmental quality when developing an urban plan.

It also provides an insight into how the EU and Italy are implementing measures and strategies to address environmental and social issues, promote sustainability and social inclusion in urban communities.

The introduction also outlines the need to find an integral assessment of the state of the urban environment based on integral indicators that take into account socio-economic and environmental characteristics and health map parameters.

The main aim and objective of this research are clearly stated and are as follows. She overarching aim of this research is to ascertain whether there are connections between innovative territorial governance methods achieved through the establishment of guidelines and quali-quantitative criteria for the planning, design, and regeneration of urban components (primarily public ones) outlined in local planning instruments and the excellent results attained by the two cities under examination (Vienna and Bologna) in international rankings assessing quality of life. The goal is to outline theoretical-methodological and operational references that can be applied to different urban contexts, to experiment with a "Clima-Equitable" innovation in the local urban plan as future developments of the research.

The methodology of the research is based on the provisions of system analysis, the study used inductive methodology with an iterative approach, consisting of two main stages.

Stage 1 - Synthesis and categorization of only indicators related to urban structure and components taken from the two datasets;

Stage 2 - Analysis of the structure of the local plans of the model cities in order to identify elements useful for defining qualitative and quantitative criteria (parameters for planning, design and regeneration of urban components, primarily public ones.

The solution materializes in the formulation of two different results (Target):

- Definition of an initial set of urban well-being indicators exportable to different territorial contexts (to assess the quality of urban components (primarily public) and their impact on the well-being of residents).

- Definition of qualitative-quantitative criteria/parameters for the planning, design and regeneration of these components, also exported to different territorial contexts, in particular those presented in the annexes.

The discussion emphasizes the methodological orientation of the manuscript, whose main contribution is to provide theoretical, methodological and practical guidelines for the innovation of the local urban plan using a

A climate-just approach. The need to consider sustainable urban development from both environmental and socio-economic perspectives.

The conclusions are substantiated and the applications given have not only theoretical but also practical relevance in the development of urban city plans.

The manuscript has good illustrations revealing the content and results of the study.

The article is recommended for publication in the journal.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper addresses an important issue related to the right to the city in the present socio-environmental, crisis, using cities which are known for their quality of life. However, I have some remarks about how the study is constructed.
First, the introduction reads like a long list of arguments from the literature but doesn't really arrive at an argument or research question. I have to wait for section 3 (Methodology) to read clearly what is the aim of the research.

Second, the elements in Table 3 (Target 2) define criteria for planning and design that everyone can agree with, but the relevance and innovation of the research would be in connecting them with the indicators of Table 2 and try to explore at least some of them to demonstrate the mechanisms that turn these parameters into valuable satisfiers of human needs. As it stands, the author provides merely a generic list.

Thirds, and on the same note, the exploration suggested above could be done in the discussion and conclusion sections, which are very short and generic. There should be space to illustrate the effects of some parameters on the indicators, explain potential hidden variables, and explore the specific characteristics of both cities that could activate the mechanisms that improve urban welfare. Just mentioning that the aim is to demonstrate a methodology is not sufficient to make the paper relevant.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language level is sufficient, with the occasional typo and incorrect phrase construction. Some moderate editing is advisable.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Essentially the paper use the the results of two indexes for two cities (Wien and Bologna) with the aim to establish a set of urban welfare indicators assessing the quality of urban components (predominantly public ones) and the impact the well-being of settled inhabitants. The two indexes are: for the international context, the Global Liveability Index (2022); for the Italian context: 33rd Survey on Quality of Life (2022).

The aim of the paper it is not achieved. In particular:

1. The two indexes used are not superimposable. Indicators and cathegories are different and the results about the liveability of the cities testify of the specific used structure. This must be clearly underlined.

2. The methodology, with the synthesis and the categorization of the indicators, remain a descriptive construction. For this reason of point 3 it is not verifiable.

3. Despite in the abstract the author write that the paper wants to define qualitative-quantitative criteria/parameters for planning and designing, the paper lacks of a result of interest, namely the application of the theoric structure of indicators (using the same dataset) for a comparison between the two case study.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper is well written, and contributes defining an interpretative framework for experimental approaches in territorial governance, scheme for developing urban welfare and resilience through a "ClimaEquitable" in the local urban plan, which enables support and substantiate strategies and actions for ecological and equitable urban regeneration for all segments of the population from a socioeconomic perspective.

There are some problems, which must be solved before it is considered for publication. If the following problems are well-addressed, this reviewer believes that the essential contribution of this paper are important for Urban resilience and Urban welfare.

1. You may summarize your abstract in simple, clear, and incisive language to extract the main message of your paper, and condense it into a single paragraph.

2. Introduction should provide background, research gap, research objectives, but the author took a lot of part to explain background. The purpose of your research is not mentioned in the introduction.

3. Titles of the first two sections are too long, the recommendation is divided into two parts: introduction and literature review. Please simplify the subheadings.

4. You may want to unify the formatting of your tables and enlarge your flowchart, changing the color scheme to make it clear and concise. And the figures in your paper are a bit blurry. Please consider replacing them with clearer ones。

5. There are some abbreviated words such as SPTEP and PUG are not clearly introduced in your manuscript, and their full names and meanings should be added.

6. The manuscript does not give a proper introduction to the research area and data, and lacks the selection of framework evaluation indicators and the detailed description of experimental methods. Please elaborate further on the process of the iterative approach mentioned in the methodology and explain its feasibility.

7. Please elaborate more convincingly on the selection of the framework indicators in manuscript, and emphasize your innovative part.

8. In addition to, these papers are useful to the authors, for example, Relationship between urban landscape structure and land surface temperature; Understanding the effects of 2D/3D urban morphology on land surface temperature based on local climate zones.

I think the paper has the potential to be published because the framework mentioned in the article is appropriate and important for urban sustainable development.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

1. You may summarize your abstract in simple, clear, and incisive language to extract the main message of your paper, and condense it into a single paragraph.

3. Titles of the first two sections are too long, the recommendation is divided into two parts: introduction and literature review. Please simplify the subheadings.

5. There are some abbreviated words such as SPTEP and PUG are not clearly introduced in your manuscript, and their full names and meanings should be added.

7. Please elaborate more convincingly on the selection of the framework indicators in manuscript, and emphasize your innovative part.

I think the paper has the potential to be published because the framework mentioned in the article is appropriate and important for urban sustainable development.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has satisfactorily addressed the previous comments and improved the paper. The introduction is now clearer, the significance of the research is more visible as the various tables and indicators are discussed in relation to each other, and the discussion and conclusion sections uncover some of the mechanisms and implications of the research.

Author Response

I warmly thank the reviewer for helping me to structure my paper better. Her/his advice was very useful in clarifying the research objective and results.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The second version of the paper improves the structure and the aim of the paper. I continue to have dubts about the attachment.

My doubts are referred to attachments A and B.

In the text (3.2.1), the author write: "For the sake of brevity, in Appendix A some interesting strategies and quali-quantitative references ...". I think that is better a resume of Attachment A positioned directly in the mentioned paragraph.

The same doubt is for Attachment B.

Paragraph 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 are central in the structure of the paper because they describe the two case-studies. For this reason they could be strengthened.

However my suggests are only to improve the paper.

Author Response

I warmly thank the reviewer for helping me to structure my paper better. Her/his advice was very useful in clarifying the research objective and results.